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Here’s a counter example: France reduced its presidential term from seven to five years because it found that the longer term exhibited worse hysteresis.*

Also, California implemented term limits which have made the government worse: rather than having a politician learn the ropes and build a specific practice over time, they get into office, spend a term learning and doing a little useful stuff; by the second term they can start to be really useful, but have to think about their next job as well. This has increased the power of lobbyists who do have longer tenure.

* The specific problem was electing an unpopular and corrupt president because his alternative was worse.




Term limits are a band-aid without a purpose, at least in the USA, because each and every "term" person could get primaried.

Since they don't, term limits are mostly sour grapes on the part of the losing faction.

So they literally become "you can vote for whomever you want, except the person you actually want".


> you can vote for whomever you want, except the person you actually want".

That’s basically a problem of every governmental system, including autocratic ones (why should that person be king? Well at this point trying to change it would lead to a power struggle that would be even worse, so I’ll just put up with it).

Democracies are all about trade offs and mostly about least worst decisions. Still superior to anything else tried so far.


Actually, France reduced it's political term mainly for avoiding the " cohabitation" effect.

But agree the short term led the impossibility to define and implement a Vision.




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